Word.ws English Dictionary

hang fire

hang fire verb: to fail to fire immediately when the trigger is pulled.

Verb

hang fire (third-person singular simple present hangs fire, present participle hanging fire, simple past and past participle hung fire)

  1. To fail to fire immediately when the trigger is pulled.
    • […] a number of Portuguese soldiers entered, one of whom, taking me for a Frenchman, for I had the French soldier's jacket on, my own being wet, snapped his piece at me, which luckily hung fire.1841, Edward Costello, The adventures of a soldier
  2. (figuratively) To wait or hold back.
    • We were told to hang fire on the decision until management came back with a proposal.
    • “I’m just goin’ ter settle this little ——, that’s all,” said Dawes desperately.
      “What do you mean?” snapped Thomas Jordan.
      “What I say,” said Dawes, but he hung fire.1913, D[avid] H[erbert] Lawrence, “chapter 13”, in Sons and Lovers, London: Duckworth & Co. […], →OCLC

Noun

hang fire (plural hang fires)

  1. The situation when a gun does not immediately fire when the trigger is pulled, but may fire shortly after.

hang fire meaning in Tamil and Malayalam

hang fire in Tamil

செயல் மந்தம்

hang fire in Malayalam

hold on, delay, hang back
പ്രവർത്തനം നീട്ടിക്കൊണ്ടു പോകുക, പ്രവർത്തനം നീണ്ടുപോകുക, പുരോഗതി നിലയ്ക്കുക, കാലതാമസം വരുത്തുക, താമസിപ്പിക്കുക, വിളംബപ്പെടുത്തുക

Forms of hang fire

Verb
third-person singular presenthangs fire
present participlehanging fire
past participlehung fire
pasthung fire
Noun
pluralhang fires
alternative formhangfire
alternative formhang-fire

Questions about hang fire

What does hang fire mean?
Hang fire means to fail to fire immediately when the trigger is pulled.
What is hang fire in Tamil?
Hang fire in Tamil is செயல் மந்தம். See Hang fire meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is hang fire?
Hang fire can be a verb or a noun.
What is the past tense of hang fire?
The past tense of hang fire is hung fire.

Words near hang fire in the dictionary

  1. hang by a hair
  2. hang by a thread
  3. hang by the eyelids
  4. hang dog
  5. hang dogs
  6. hang fire
  7. hang fires
  8. hang five
  9. hang fives
  10. hang glide
  11. hang glider

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hang fire (page history and authors); hang fire (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); hang fire (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “hang fire.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/hang_fire. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.